Thursday, May 22, 2014

The headlines today make it seem so. But Nicholas O'Donnell says "read carefully, ... the story is nothing new at all, just a retelling of last year's 'news' released around the anniversary of the theft and a raft of conjecture."

Monday, May 12, 2014

Meanwhile, one observer says "the city will probably end up back in Chapter 9 because they aren't fixing anything."

UPDATE: Mark Stryker wrote about this in the Detroit Free Press last month. Bottom line, as he put it on Twitter this morning, is that "other bankruptcy experts disagree w/ Skeel" (though he added: "That said, Skeel's view will be heart of bond insurers courtroom arguments. Big questions for Judge Rhodes").

Says Professor Bainbridge, though he adds that "Sotheby's then caved by putting Loeb and a couple of his cronies on their board" and recommends, "for good discussions of why Sotheby's caved," Alison Frankel here and Steven Davidoff here.

Monday, May 05, 2014

UPDATE: Who won? The Times declares it a "clear win" for Loeb. The Art Market Monitor disagrees: "[I]t is hard to credit [that] conclusion since he was offered a board seat and has basically wound up with … a board seat. ... The compromise blunts his three seats with an additional two giving Loeb little more in the way of power. Yes, Loeb will be allowed to increase his stake from under 10% to 15% but without a clear plan to increase revenues substantially, that increased stake may only be a gift to present shareholders who sell to him in the coming weeks."

UPDATE: A different take from Henry Farrell: "I would furthermore speculate (and this is speculation, but, I think, grounded speculation) that these tendencies towards skew are going to be substantially accentuated by increased wealth inequality, as very rich people compete over a tiny pool of premier artistic prestige goods, dramatically driving up the prices for this pool and this pool alone, while leaving the middle and the tail of the distribution to languish and stagnate."